Anyone heard of Fiscal Year 1999 computer problems? I understand there were some bank problems in Arizona. See the Gary North General discusson forum for details. I think the older systems in Asia were supposed to have problems...

-- Paul Powell (PaulPowell@Hotmail.com), July 12, 1998

Answers

Paul, You asked a very valid question. We should be hearing about lots of huge problems now according to the predictions we've read. I have none to report. The deafening silence you here on this thread is incredible, it seems someone could at least make up a good catastrophe story to support the credibility of the Y2k soothsayers. Come on, give us just one agency in one state which destroyed its financial records because of the dreaded '99 problem. This must be as disheartening for some folks as the success of the Wall Street test is. Then there's that darn report from Merrill Lynch and what about the audacity of the Canadians reporting that they have nearly completed repairs on the tax collectors' software. It's enough to make a guy paranoid about being paranoid. Y2k is systemic, it can't be fixed, umm,umm,umm...

-- Joe (JOEH@sanity.net), July 15, 1998.

Today I called Travis County Tax office to find out where to get one of those three-part vehicle registration things; mine expired 13 months ago and I finally got a ticket. Clerk read verbatim "end of transaction" while looking up my truck. Said this '99 expiration thing has been going on for a week, and IBM was trying to fix it. Should have asked if they were on a 3083.

I had to drive downtown to get my sticker and no mention was made of the "missing" year. I forgot to ask if the real estate taxing data were undergoing the same '99 program aborts. This is in Austin.

-- no tax (lucky@dog.com), July 15, 1998.

Read Gary North's Link today (July 15) and learn what happened in Honk Kong to the "state of the art newest airport". This is just a sample of things to come!!

-- Betty Allison (bettya@pflash.com), July 15, 1998.

I never thought 99 would be a major problem. If it is, remember most mainframe enviroments post over the month and then process eom(end of month). If 99 will be a problem for those who roll over to 99 for a fiscal year, look for it later.

I still think the 99 issue is not a big problem. The 99 exit issue is not really a problem. "99 exit" is usually a lable not a field calculation. I dealt with this on previous posts. I think this issue has been made up by poeple who do not know cobol or programming in general. Just because 99 is used in programming does not mean it is used in conjunction with date calculations. Far to deep, programming is an art not a science. I could program an application to distroy itself when encountering 99 anything. Hell, just check sysdate anytime and 99exit. Game over. Too many variables. The opposite is true, I could program an application than only stores the year in 2 digits to handle 2000 with little or no problems. Depends on the programmers and the application. This is the problem. Too many variables.

thx,

j

-- j (yada@yada.com), July 16, 1998.